


Nailed It! Halloween Spooktacular

by dragonofeternal



Category: Nailed It! (TV)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Trick or Treat: Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-07 04:50:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16401641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofeternal/pseuds/dragonofeternal
Summary: Join Nicole, Jacques, and their guest judge as they deal with a potentially haunted set in another fabulous episode of everyone's favorite cake fail filled Netflix original.





	Nailed It! Halloween Spooktacular

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fleurlb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurlb/gifts).



_Welcome to Nailed It!_

_Some shows are dedicated to the best bakers in the world. This one… is not. If you're the kind of baker who tries to brings all the treats, but seems to always end up getting tricked, than our special Halloween challenge is for you! We take inexperienced bakers, bring them here, and challenge them to make amazing, magical desserts. One of them will walk away with ten thousand dollars.It's time to see who nails it, and who fails it!_

Nicole held her grin until Wes gave her the thumbs up that the shot was good, and she shimmied over to another section of the set to stand next to her co-star Jacques Torres and their guest judge for the episode, Rafael Figueroa.

"Lovely as always," Jacques said with a smile, and Nicole gave him a big grin in reply. 

"I'm just so excited for today's theme," she said, giving a wink to the camera. The cameraman made a gesture to say no, they weren't rolling yet, but, well, that was Nicole. Full of energy and life. "Always some epic ideas when it comes to Halloween treats, like those old home and garden magazines, and they neeever turn out the way you expect. We're gonna see some exciting stuff today." 

The camera crew gave a sign, and Nicole perked up to attention, ready to pick up where the edited-in introduction to their three bakers— stay-at home dad Jamil Blake, data analyst Della Morton, and aerospace engineer Pablo Howard— would end. "And here come our bakers now! Oh, oh, it's so good to have you all here." 

"Great to be here!" Della replied with a smile and a wink. 

"Today, one of you will walk away with a scary amount of money- ten _thousand_ dollars. But if you wanna win that dough, first you're gonna need to impress me and our two judges." Nicole gestured to her left. "Here we've got our head judge, master chocolatier and chef extraordinaire, Jacques Torres."

Jacques gave them all a warm, welcoming smile. "What's Halloween without chocolate, non?" 

"Right?" Nicole laughed. "And over here to my other side is our guest judge, master pumpkin carver and D-movie horror star, Rafael Figueroa!"

"If there's two things I know in this world," Rafael said, tossing the long hair he was perhaps a bit too old to wear over his shoulder, "it's good food, and sucking at things. So I'm basically perfect for this show!" 

"You're also great," Nicole corrected, "at dealing with scary things. And you're gonna need that talent as we head into our first challenge… Baker's Choice." 

Nicole corralled contestants and judges alike to door number one, now covered in fake cobwebs, and all peered curiously at the door. 

"For this round, you're each going to be making one of our…" the doors flew open, "spooky sandwich cookies!" The camera crew got in close for a dramatic pan of the options. "Will you choose the scary spider, the terrible teeth, or the mysterious monster to start off your time here on Nailed It? The winner of this round will receive a special prize. Bakers, get ready… we start now!" 

It was an uncharacteristically brief moment before Della sprinted forward to claim the spider and then rush back to her station. Pablo and Jamil elbowed each other as they realized the clock was starting now, each rushing to grab their own treat. 

"So, Jacques, how would you go about starting off these tricky treats?" Nicole asked once everyone was underway.

Jacques leaned back in his chair, gesturing relaxedly. "Well, Nicole, the first thing they're going to want to do is bake the cookies that will make the top and bottom for their sandwiches. While those are in the oven, they should prepare the icing to adhere the cookies. Finally, they'll want to prepare the decorations by-"

A loud thump interrupted Jacques' explanation. Nicole jumped with a shriek. 

"Wes?" She looked around the set. "Wes!!" 

Super Producer Wes hurried onto the set, poking his head just into frame. "Yes, Nicole."

"Wes, what was that?" 

"Pretty sure someone dropped something backstage." 

Nicole gave him a suspicious look. "Are you suuure?" 

"Pretty sure, yes."

Nicole and Wes locked eyes just long enough for it to seem dubious whether or not it was a bit for the cameras, and Jacques held a hand in front of his face to hide a giggle. 

"Okay, Wes… But if the set is haunted, you're gonna be the one who has to answer for it!" 

The rest of Baker's Choice ran without strange noises however, and when it came time to judge, Nicole and the crew had some… interesting cookie sandwiches to sample.

"Okay, first up we have Della… you had the spider cookies. They were supposed to look like this… and-" 

Della turned her plate around to reveal a surprisingly solid looking cookie sandwich with spindly licorice legs….and a _very_ lopsided face. "Nailed it!" she all but sang.

"Woooow, these actually look really cute!"

"But what matters is the taste," Jacques pointed out. He took a fork and attempted to cut the cookie, but instead it cracked down the middle. "It looks like the bottoms of your cookies are a little burnt- if you line your tray, it will help keep the temperature more uniform and not burn them next time."

Rafael took a bite. "Tastes like cookie though, so that's great! Even if it is a little burny." 

Nicole nodded and gave an appraising glance over Della's cookies. "Okay, thank you Della. We're gonna keep trucking along!" The trio shuffled to the station of Pablo. "Pablooo."

"Nicooooole," Pablo shot her some finger guns.

"You had the monster cookie! It was supposed to look like this... " she gestured to his example cookie.

"And I nailed it!" Pablo proudly revealed his sandwich cookie, buried beneath a mountain of puke colored frosting. The colors had bled together poorly in his mixing bag, leaving it looking less like an adorable member of Sesame Street and more like a melting pile of felt. 

"Ah…" Nicole nodded, a shell-shocked smile on her face. "Well, it looks like Cookie Monster had a bit of a bender last night, but let's see if he doesn't still taste good, yeah?" 

The three judges all took a bite and grimaced. 

"He doesn't still taste good," Nicole repeated. "Oh. Oh that's salty." 

"What…" Pablo looked confused, and then he glanced back at his station. "Oh, no…"

"It looks like you may have mixed up the sugar and salt in your cookie," Jacques said, having choked down his bite and now ready to dispense sage wisdom. "Despite that, you still have a very good consistency to your cookie. It falls apart nicely in the mouth while keeping its shape in the hands. As for the icing, try to let the cookies cool a bit before you ice it, that way it does not melt and run." 

Pablo looked down sadly, and as he did the lights began to flicker, and for a moment the entire set was plunged into a deep, deep darkness, lit only by the screens on the cameras.

"Wessss," Nicole called into the gloom, "Wes, we have more spooky stuff happening. Are you sure there's no ghost?" 

The lights flickered again, and the lights came on, and nothing else seemed amiss. Wes made a gesture to keep rolling and headed off to go check with the lighting crew to see what happened.

"Okay, Wes is gonna find out where the ghost is, so I guess we're on our own to keep from dying in our own cake-themed horror movie," Nicole said with a nervous laugh.

"Well, even though Pablo goofed up, we've still got a lot of salt." Rafael pointed to the pantry. "We can make a ring and drive the ghost away." 

"See, we need this guy around all the time!" Nicole turned her attention back to Pablo and nodded. "Thank you, Pablo." She lead her trio to the final table. "Annnd last but not least… Jamil." 

"You know it." 

"You had the terrifying teeth sandwich. How'd you do?"

"Nailed it!" Jamil revealed his cookie. 

Jacques, Nicole, and Rafael all took in the marshmallow teeth and googly, mismatched eyes. It looked, at least, like he had maybe nailed it. But after two tries that seemed to fall a little short in the flavor department, the judges weren't ready to assume all was well just yet. Rafael did the honors of cutting each judge a bit of cookie.

"Looks alright," said Nicole slowly, taking a bite. "....and hey, tastes pretty alright too!"

"A little dry," said Jacques, "but overall very well done." 

Jamil grinned proudly. "You know it." 

"Are you sure you belong on this show?" Nicole asked, narrowing her eyes at Jamil and leaning into his bubble. He laughed, holding up his hands defensively. 

"Hey, hey, cookies I can do, but uh… look we'll see about this next round."

Nicole seemed satisfied, but she gave him one last threatening eyebrow waggle. "Okay… but if we find out you're secretly the second Jacques, you're gonna have to give me your number." 

The three of them made their way back to the podium. 

"After judging all the cookies," Rafael announced, "we have come to our decision. The winner of Baker's Choice is…. Jamil!" 

"Yooo!" Jamil jumped up and down with joy. "Man, that's awesome!" 

Nicole gestured dramatically off camera, and in wheeled a common site on the Nailed It! set: the Wilton cake decorating kit. 

"Oh man, me and my kids are gonna have so much fun with this! I almost don't even care if I win the whole thing." He graciously took the golden baker's cap and posed. "But that doesn't mean I'm giving up yet."

"Well, don't forget we start fresh with this round. And, Pablo, since you had so much trouble in the last round, we're giving you a little extra help. You get the "Pardon My French" button! If at any point you feel a little threatened by the other contestants getting Jacques' help, you can hit that button and Jacques will switch to his native tongue." Nicole took a deep breath. "Now, who's ready to see what's behind door number two for Nail It or Fail It?" 

"Me, me, me~" sang Jamil, still high off his win. The other contestants nodded as well.

"All right then… Here it is!" Nicole gestured broadly to the door, which swung open to reveal a dramatic cake, shaped to look like a pumpkin wearing a witches hat. The fondant brim of the hat draped dramatically over the pumpkin, and edible chocolate decorations of spiders crawled on the hat's surface. "You'll be making this gorgeous pumpkin head cake! You have two hours, bakers! Clocks start now." 

This time there was no hesitation- all the bakers rushed to their stations, reading over the instructions on their tablets before starting to bake. 

At first it went pretty basic- mix ingredients, start icing, get the cakes baked and then cooled so they could be shaped… but basic doesn't mean easy by any means. 

"I literally build rockets for a living," Pablo joked as he vainly attempted to prop his leaning cake hat up with his hands. "You'd think it'd be easier for me to plan how to keep a cake from falling down." 

"Well, when you spend all day juggling three kids," Jamil quipped back with a smile, "maybe you'll be better at keeping stuff from falling over." As if to punctuate Jamil's hubris, the tip of his hat fell off. "Aww, man…" He glanced at the panic button. "You know what, no, we're not gonna do this. Rule one, never be afraid to ask for help." He slammed his hand down on the button, and Jacques hustled over to his station. 

Jacques began explaining techniques to help stabilize the hat, as well as how to troubleshoot the loss that had just occurred. Pablo glanced between Jacques and the Pardon My French button before deciding losing out on eavesdropped advice was worth it to keep his more talented rival out of the lead. He slammed his hand down on the button, and Jacques, in an instant, swapped over from English to French. 

"Good thing I still remember some of my French from college," Della called across the set. 

Pablo was not phased though, and Jamil just made a face at her, doing his best to make sense of a language he didn't speak. The contestants threw themselves wholeheartedly into the work of their baking, until the time came for Nicole to shout out the final ten seconds… and then it was over. The contestants lined up, their cakes ready to be presented for the final round of judging.

"So, Della," Nicole said. "You had a pretty solid start. Lets see how you did on this round's decorations!" 

Della gave her a shaky smile as she turned around her cake. "Nailed it?" 

The pumpkin base was almost completely eclipsed by the outlandishly large hat, whose brim was just a loose sheet of fondant vaguely cut into shape and patchily dyed purple. Nicole smiled, then grimaced, then smiled again, nodding all the while. 

"Okay! Your pumpkin's looking a little squashed." 

"Well, it is a squash technically," Della pointed out.

Nicole cackled with glee. "Fair, fair! So you didn't have your cake have too many leaning problems. How'd you do that?" 

"Well, the top here is pretty much all rice crispy treat, and then I just covered it in fondant." 

"So then where is the cake?" Jaques asked. 

"The pumpkin!"

"Soo… In our squashed squash," Nicole clarified finally. "Okay! Let's have a taste." 

The judges all mulled it over. Once you got past the mountain of rice crispie, the cake was…. Okay. Not terrible, and not burnt like last time, but nothing stupendous. They moved on to the next contestant. 

"Pablooo," Nicole called. "How'd it go this time Pablo?" 

"Better?" Pablo said, sounding not so sure. "Nailed it!" 

The judges looked over his cake, taking in the unintentional but jaunty lean to the hat and the bright colors on the pumpkin. "Looking good, looking good," Rafael said. "I actually kinda like how the leaning hat turned out. It's kinda fun!" 

"Thank you," Pablo mumbled as the judges took their pieces, chewing thoughtfully.

"You know, when you're not filling your stuff with salt, you're pretty good at this!" Nicole said with a laugh.

"Nicole is right. The cake is moist, the decorations look good… you did a good job, Pablo." Jacques clapped Pablo on the shoulder to congratulate him on his improvement. "We're going to go judge Jamil now." 

Jamil winced into a smile as they approached. "Hey, gang!" 

"Heeeey, Jamil. You gonna knock our socks off again?" Nicole asked with a grin. 

Jamil's wince grew a little wider. "Well, I sure as heck am gonna try to! ….Nailed it!" He spun his cake around, and as he did, the broken portion of his witch hat fell off again.

Nicole suppressed a giggle behind her hand. "Okay, okay, okay. Well, stuff falling apart is bad, but taste is important too." 

Unfortunately, that proved to be a stumbling block as well as the judges dug in. "It looks like portions of your cake did not get cooked properly," Jacques said. "Which is probably part of why you had such trouble shaping it. But your molding chocolate spiders are very good, and so you should be proud of that."

"Thank you Jamil," Nicole said, leading the party back to the platform to proclaim their final judgments. "We have now judged your hats! So by the power vested in me by the set ghost, the spirit of Halloween, and the executive production team at Netflix, the winner is…" 

The contestants leaned forward slightly in anticipation. Nicole leaned forward, then back, then forward again, and waggled her eyebrows at them. Della cracked a smile at that.

"The winner is Pablo!!!" Nicole shouted with glee, throwing her hands into the air. 

Pablo's eyes went wide with shock. "What? Really?" 

Della and Jamil moved in for the hug, tousling Pablo's dark hair and laughing with him. 

"Yes! Really!" Nicole said. "Now that ghost better not have stolen our-" Wes scuttled onto the stage, passing Nicole the money gun. "Ah, yes, the money gun, not stolen by unseen forces, just forgotten by Wes. Thank you, Wes." She passed the gun to Rafael, who took it with the manic glee that only a scenery-chewing D-lister can muster. He gave a maniacal laugh and pulled the trigger as Nicole issued the order, "Hit him with the money!" 

Bills flew at the laughing, shocked Pablo. "I never thought this day would come," he said softly. "I never thought I'd manage to make a cake and have it not taste terrible. My life is complete now. I feel…" He seemed to be glowing softly as the last of the money fell to the floor at his feet. "I feel at peace." 

In a soft flash of light, Pablo Howard vanished, leaving just two contestants and a pile of money where he had stood just moments before.

Rafael laughed. "Man, that was a pretty good effect. Netflix is really stepping up their ga-" he turned to look at the wide eyed Nicole and Jacques, then back at the camera. "Oh. Well, fuck. I mean- oh man are they gonna have to bleep that out?" 

All the assembled people stared at the money, not sure of what to say for a long time, until Jamil doffed his golden baker's cap and looked earnestly at Nicole and Jacques. "So, since the winner was a ghost whose final wish was to… I guess win a baking competition, does that mean Della and I get to split his winnings fifty-fifty? 'Cuz I really wanna take my kids to Disney for Christmas."


End file.
